Happy Independence Day, fellow patriots! I hope you’re enjoying the wonderful weather and are able to share this memorable date in history with your family and fellow patriots.

As I was monitoring my Q today, I found myself reflecting on something that I find quite peculiar. Has anyone noticed that Independence Day has been morphing into a kind of second Veterans Day celebration? I’ve never took much notice of this phenomenon in the past. Perhaps I was simply blind or clueless to it. I’m confident a reader will help fill in a few details on the subject.

Public TV announcements show images of people placing flowers at a grave site in a veterans internment plot, public radio announcements remind us to “thank a vet” for the freedoms we enjoy, published Letters-to-the-Editor proclaim the sender’s gratitude for the service of veterans, FB posts by some conflate their religion with national symbols going so far as to claim the good ol’ US of A is a gift of their friend up there in the sky somewhere and is working hand-in-hand with America’s military to secure “our blessings.” My local newspaper’s headline page today contained a giant photo of an aging Korean War vet kneeling next to a 20’ flag pole in his yard on which he flies a 3’x5’ American flag 24/7. The accompanying article provides the details of his and another vet Korean War service and medals that he’s earned. WTH?

I haven’t checked, but I’d say there’s a very good probability that David Barton is probably giving free tours of the Capitol Rotunda spreading his gospel of the founders’ godliness and the critical role that Moses and Jesus played in our country’s founding.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not working here to downplay or belittle the role of those who serve our nation in the military or the veterans who’ve served before them. Both are worthy of our highest accolades. Far from it. What I’m trying to figure out is the connection between our national day of independence from Britain and our military, America’s war veterans, and in many cases, the Christian imagery that seems to accompany the outpouring of patriotism that I am observing these days in digital and pulp media.

Why am I confused? Well, my creds in history may not be as stellar as David Barton’s or Franklin Graham but if I’m recalling my seventh-grade history lessons correctly, July 4 celebrated the day in 1776 that the “Declaration Of Independence” from mother Britain was adopted by a group of men who lived in the area of Virginia and Pennsylvania, men who had the audacity to believe that “governments were instituted among men who believed that their power to govern came solely from the consent of the governed,” not from God or kings who pretended to be God’s representative on Earth.

No, the Declaration of Independence was actually written by Thomas Jefferson, a Deist who detested Christianity to such a degree that he cut and removed all references to the divinity of Jesus, the so-called miracles and his alleged resurrection from his copy of the King James Bible. He also removed most references to “the supernatural.”

Jefferson’s god was the god of Spinoza and Einstein, “Nature’s god,” not a god that intervened in human affairs, spied on Earth’s inhabitants or demanded unending adoration and worship from any schmuck willing to leave his brains at the church vestibule before they joined a Sunday worshipathon.

Anyone with a working finger, more than two brain cells and a third-grader’s understanding of how to use Google can learn of Jefferson’s view of Christianity in a couple of seconds, a mere fraction of time that it takes some people to post one more in an endless stream of casserole recipes on their Facebook page”

Here, for example, is something that I pulled up in about 4 nanoseconds:Jefferson wrote that “Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God.” He called the writers of the New Testament “ignorant, unlettered men” who produced “superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications.” He called the Apostle Paul the “first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.” He dismissed the concept of the Trinity as “mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.” He believed that the clergy used religion as a “mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves” and that “in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.” And he wrote in a letter to John Adams that “the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Now, given all that I’ve offered, would someone be kind enough to explain what the connection is between Christianity, god, American veterans and Independence Day?